The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1887-03-19
LIVELY BLIZZARD.
an Old Settlers Misty Yarns About thI
Cold Autumn of SO.

Cold Autumn of SO.
cit was the great original blizzard
from the northw st, an | tell you it
beat 'em IL The wind blew the
water into waves and the Id frozs
'em right thar Every pond, creek and
river was und next day all vered
with frozen waves as pretty as if they'd
been carved out that way. The day had
been very warm. The ground was coy
red W tn snow, slus and mud. About
noon tn blizzard came, and in five
IN nutes a the slush and mud was
frozen hard enough to sustain wa on.
ALI the little gullies in the sides of hills
were full of water, 50 great was the
thaw. In few minutes the blizzard
froze those running strea rs as solid as
rocks. Men were out at work that day
with their coats off, an more'n one
poor fellow was frozen stiff afore he
could get to the house, perhaps hall
mile away. Cattle, hogs and fowls
wero frozen in their trucks. unable to
get out of the frozen mud an slush. A
light rain was falling when the blizzard
struck US, and twas suddenly convert
cd into little bullets.
ga misty sort of rain was fallin'
an my coat was wet. Just rs pulled
it from my back the blast of wind took
hold of i'll was standin' on top of
Wagon-an' swept it out O. my hands.
What dye suppose happened then?
Why, sir, before that coat struck the
ground it froze stiff an went sailin'
over the ground like a cartwheel, first
Strikin' on the collar an then on the
tails. 1 never saw that coat again, but
Iheard of one like it bein' picked up
down in Southern Indiana.
81 remember hearing about man
from Pike County who was going home
from court. He was horseback. About
eleven o'clock he reached the Illinois
river, and, the ferryman being little
slow and his horse u good swimmer, he
decided to go right across without wait
ing. His horse had gone only about
twenty feet when the blizzard struck
'em, Twenty feet more, and there was
30 much ice in the river that he decided
to turn back He had all he could do
to get that horse back on the bank
afore the ice got so thick he couldn't
break it with his feet. In two hours
the ice on the river formed nine inches
thick.
"a neighbor O. mine had queer ex-
perience. He was butcherin hogs that
day; and at noon went into dinner,
leaving a good fire under the big kettle
and the water boiling under it. When
he went out after dinner the fire was
still burning brightly, but there was
two inches of ice on top of the water in
the kettle. They broke hole through
with ahatchet an my neighbor reached
his hand down in there an got it scald-
ed in the water near the bottom of the
kettle.
"On the day O. the sudden freeze
Andy was driving three hundred or
four hundred hogs to St. Louis, an had
got down near Carlinville, Macoupin
County, when the blizzard lit onto EN-.
The men had to run off an leave their
hogs an their wagons, an two O. the
horses were frozen to death in their
tracks The men managed to git into
Carlinville. several of 'em badly
frozen. The people there took good
care of 'em, an next day party
started out to look up the hogs.
Well, sir, the sight that met their
eyes was queer one. They found
them hogs all in pile in reg lar pyr-
amid, and that pyramid was bout forty
feet high. You don't believe it? Well,
'twar as true as gospel. Andy told ME
so himself, and he was a truthful man.
You see, the hogs huddled together to
keep warm. Those on the outside
were cold and kept trying to get further
In, while those on the inside wa,
smotherin' an fightin' for fresh air ant
hot KNOWN how to get it. The result O
all this was that the hogs in the middl,
was forced up by the pressure from tn,
outside an below, and as more hog
got their noses in under the outer edg,
of the pyramid an kept rootin' tore
the center the porkers in the middle
kept risin' an risin' till the topmos
one was full forty feet from tn
ground. Every hog in that drove wa
in that ar pyramid, an every tarna
pne of 'em was frozen sitter N poker
chicago Herald
The report of President Battle, o
the North Carolina State University
In tba hoard of t,rstnas chOvvs tbot III